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What is replacing the good old frequency counters these days?
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Swake:
R&S; GWInstek; B&Kprecision; Siglent; and many others do not have any frequency counters in their product line anymore. Keysight still has them (for an exorbitant mountain of money as usual).

How are frequencies and periods measured these days with some decent accuracy and many-digits-of-resolution, not as a by-product in a scope or multimeter?
coromonadalix:
many measurements are done with scopes ??? 

but if you need  lots of digits,    for sure you need counters, tcxo ocxo based  time base

and yes  they are getting hard to find, even the used ones goes for high $$$ as you wrote

Racal Dana used ones come a lot

Agilent / Hp ones too, and some added option board are available ...

one who get some attention PENDULUM CNT-90  and its fluke counter part  have some added board option to crank their frequency ranges ...

With a good design, you can do them with Avr's or Pic  mcu's 

and some chineesium projects sold on Fleabay, Ali   etc ....
jjoonathan:
Spectrum Analyzers typically come with a counter mode that will measure GHz signals down to Hz or less.

That said, I think crappy counters are mostly considered Good Enough these days because counters have been displaced from most of their historical applications. Back when a PLL cost several kilobucks and kilograms, a counter and a tuner were an attractive alternative to a synthesized signal generator. Nowadays, a PLL costs several dollars and several grams. You can toss them into even the cheapest instrument and obtain all the digits effortlessly.

This goes for knock-on applications too: it might have been historically attractive to creatively substitute a counter for a purpose-built piece of equipment but now that equipment has come down in price it makes more sense to use the right tool for the job. Timing? Use an oscilloscope, you can afford one now. Signal analysis? Use a spectrum/signal analyzer, you can afford one now. Filter tuning? Use a VNA, you can afford one now. Component characterization? Use an LCR meter, you can afford one now.
TurboTom:
Many manufacturers include a frequncy counter in their entry level arbitrary waveform generators. These counters can turn out quite advanced in some specimen with all kinds of configuration, statistics and graphical presentation (freq. vs. time) options, see the attached photo of my "pimped" Rigol DG800, fed with a 10MHz FM signal, modulated by an arbitrary Sinc of 10mHz and 1MHz deviation (Rigol forgot to implement a "Print Screen function in Counter mode  :palm:, hence the "classic" screenshot). Despite the decent internal reference TCXO, a 10MHz reference input permits to get even more accurate results.

For the "real business", I pull out my hp 53310a modulation domain analyzer (MDA) and hook up a rubidium atomic reference, which usually is somewhat overkill...  ;)
pdenisowski:

--- Quote from: jjoonathan on August 08, 2023, 02:10:24 pm ---Spectrum Analyzers typically come with a counter mode that will measure GHz signals down to Hz or less.

That said, I think crappy counters are mostly considered Good Enough these days because counters have been displaced from most of their historical applications. Back when a PLL cost several kilobucks and kilograms, a counter and a tuner were an attractive alternative to a synthesized signal generator. Nowadays, a PLL costs several dollars and several grams. You can toss them into even the cheapest instrument and obtain all the digits effortlessly.

This goes for knock-on applications too: it might have been historically attractive to creatively substitute a counter for a purpose-built piece of equipment but now that equipment has come down in price it makes more sense to use the right tool for the job. Timing? Use an oscilloscope, you can afford one now. Signal analysis? Use a spectrum/signal analyzer, you can afford one now. Filter tuning? Use a VNA, you can afford one now. Component characterization? Use an LCR meter, you can afford one now.

--- End quote ---

Yes, exactly this.  I can't remember the last time a customer asked me for a dedicated frequency counter.
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